The ways in which people listen to music and other types of audio content have changed considerably over the years due to technological advances. It was once common for people to possess collections of music in the form of records, audio cassette tapes, and later compact discs (CDs). With improved compression techniques, maintaining music collections in digital file formats such as MP3 became popular.
Regardless of the underlying audio file format, a key issue for people who want to listen to music (or any other type of audio content, such as audio books, lectures, etc.) pertains to how the music can be accessed. With records, cassette tapes, and CDs, a trip to the record store was the typical way to acquire more music. Portable players for audio cassettes and CDs enabled people to take their music with them, albeit only for a few songs or albums at a time. With improvements in communications networks (e.g., faster access to the Internet) and improved data compression technologies, it has become more common for people to obtain music over a network such as the Internet.
Starting approximately in the mid-1990s, it became possible for individuals (at least those with relatively fast computer networking capabilities) to listen to digitally compressed audio tracks on their computers by converting music on CDs to a compressed digital format (e.g. MP3, AAC etc.) or by downloading audio tracks, typically in the form of songs and albums from websites on the Internet, e.g., in the MP3 file format. In the late 1990s, small portable digital music player devices housing a storage drive and a mechanism (e.g., a cable) for connecting to a desktop computer became available. In October 2001, Apple Inc. introduced the first version of its now ubiquitous portable digital music player known as the iPod®. With the first generation portable digital music players, one needed to physically connect the portable device to a desktop computer to transfer songs in the form of compressed digital audio tracks to the device. As storage capabilities improved, large numbers of songs could be stored on such portable devices. One drawback of such a device was the relatively cumbersome process required to store content on the device for later listening involving acquiring the compressed audio tracks on a desktop computer and then selecting the audio tracks to transfer to the portable device from the desktop computer.
Beginning with the introduction of the iPhone® in 2007 and the mobile version of Apple's iTunes® and App stores, another trend which has impacted the music listening landscape has been the proliferation of wireless networking products and technologies. Users who were formerly restricted to their desktop computers for Internet access can use wireless networking to access the Internet while mobile using portable wireless devices such as smartphones. Individuals can access a variety of online audio content via websites and mobile applications for downloading and streaming music while online. Streaming applications and websites transmit data representing music over a network (e.g., the Internet) as a continuous stream, so that playback of data representing a particular audio track that has already been received and buffered can proceed while subsequent data is still being received. The iTunes® store mobile application permits iPhone® users to search for and wirelessly acquire audio tracks that can be downloaded to the mobile device for later playback. While perhaps less cumbersome then the process of physically connecting the portable device to a desktop computer to acquire audio tracks, the user still must specifically search and select music to be downloaded to the device. Wireless streaming services like the Pandora® mobile software application permit a user to stream audio based on a recommendation system so long as the portable device has an Internet connection. Other types of wireless streaming services, such as iTunes Match® and the Amazon Cloud Player® systems, permit a user to stream songs that the user has previously acquired or stored in the cloud. Of course, if Internet connectivity is disrupted, e.g., due to moving to a location with weak or nonexistent wireless coverage, then music can no longer be streamed. A user whose devices loses wireless connectivity in this manner will no longer be able to stream audio. Further, if wireless connectivity is lost, the user may have to change to another method of audio consumption requiring the user to interact with the mobile device to continue to listen to music, which may be dangerous if the user is engaged in another activity, such as riding a bicycle or driving a vehicle, for example.
With the proliferation of music that is available online, another challenge for consumers is identifying and downloading relevant music that they may want. In addition to deciding which songs or albums they want, consumers using typical conventional technologies have to initiate the downloading of each desired song or album, which can become laborious, especially when the size of the audio library becomes large.